Image from Etsy.
This project is named after the planet the continent of Tolkien’s Middle-earth is on. I got inspiration for this project from this Instructable, and countless similar products on Etsy. The idea here is to laser cut a map of a city or some other geographical location for hanging on a wall because they are cool. To laser cut these maps, though, we need something that the laser cutter can understand: vector files. To do this, based on a predefined area (either by GPS coordinates or name), to create a vector image and, using the laser cutter software, translate to paths the laser cutter has to take. Problem is that our cities are made up of different types of landmarks: roads, parks, bodies of water, etc; laser cutting a city in a single material is not very representative. Arda separate the different “layers” of a map segment so they can be laser cut separately in different materials, adding the required grooves and cut so everything fits like a jigsaw puzzle, as a single layer.
Laser cutters have tiny buffers
Some laser cutters might not be able to cut files generated with Arda because of their small buffers. This is easily fixed either in the design phase by choosing less detail on the layers, or after generated by using your favourite vector editing tool and manually deleting non-important features.
Some assembly is required
While files generated with Arda are supposed to “just work” together, there might be some post-processing of the end cuts to make them fit as a puzzle (who here hasn’t jammed the wrong piece in a jigsaw?).